At the NewPages Blog readers and writers can catch up with their favorite literary and alternative magazines, independent and university presses, creative writing programs, and writing and literary events. Find new books, new issue announcements, contest winners, and so much more!
The Summer 2026 issue of The 2River View online journal of poetry features new work by Eileen Gloster, Dmitry Blizniuk, Pam Crow, Dolo Diaz, Erin Evans, Will Falk, Reina Garcia, Emily Light, Madeleine Pool, Forrest Rapier, and Ellen June Wright. 2River is an independent press offering free, innovative, print-ready poetry literary magazines as well as individually authored chapbooks. Authors also provide audio recordings, so readers can download and print the publication, listen to it online and via SoundCloud, and access the publication’s archive of issues and chapbooks. Submissions for the Fall 2026 issue of 2RV close August 30.
In the Summer 2026 issue of New England Review (47.2), readers can experience excerpts from New England Review’s international folio “Brazilian Badlands: Seven Women Writing the Brazilian Northeast,” guest edited by Bruna Dantas Lobato; rewarding prose by Laurence de Looze, Olaniyi Omiwale, L. F. Khouri, and Douglas Silver; and multifaceted poetry by Jennie Malboeuf, Cynthia Cruz, and Matty Layne Glasgow. Cover art by Gustavo Amaral.
The issue opens with a note from Poetry Editor Jennifer Chang reflecting on a graduate seminar about endings and offering a farewell to her role as poetry editor. Chang explores poetic closure, artistic experience, and the persistence of meaningful conversations. Through literature, music, teaching, and editorial work, Chang argues that the most powerful endings resist resolution, continuing to resonate, transform, and inspire. Indeed, the editors note that while Chang “will conclude her duties as poetry editor shortly after this issue is released from the printer, more of her selections will appear in the next issue. In the spirit of her editor’s note above, this ending is to be continued.”
“The Ambiguity of the Hypotheses”: four landmarks within the tangles, networks, and knots of Gadda’s Pasticciaccio by Adria Bernardi Bordighera Press, April 2026
An extended hybrid essay, The Ambiguity of the Hypotheses is part personal essay, part travel essay, part family and cultural history, part literary analysis, and part philological obsession, which emerged from a reconsideration of Carlo Emilia Gadda’s Quer pasticciaccio brutto de via Merulana, a masterpiece of 20th century Italian literature. A great experimental novel and influencer of the crime genre, Gadda’s Pasticciaccio considers fascism and the language of fascism. The essay is part of the Robert Viscusi Essay Series.
“It’s a tangle. It is a big tangle of a novel. A series of knots within knots within knots.” — from The Ambiguity of the Hypotheses
The 2026 annual issue of Presence marks its 10th Anniversary of publishing the best poetry informed by the Catholic faith as well as book reviews, interviews, and “life’s work” essays. This newest issue’s featured poet is Judith Valente, and the Featured Translations section focuses on works by Kutsugen, Mei Sheng, and Rihaku — translated by Ezra Pound, and works by Li Bai — translated by Vayda Pascarella.
Readers will find two interviews in Presence 2026: “’A Way of Saying Yes’: Samuel Hazo on the Communion of Poetry and Faith” by Janine Molinaro and “Evidence of the Divine: Landscape, Dream and Transformation in the Poetry of Linda Nemec Foster” by Anne-Marie Oomen. In addition, there are 26 book reviews, and “Life’s Work” features “Spending Time with Martha Silano” by J. D. Schraffenberger and “Joseph Bathanti: A Life Redeemed Through Poetry” by Ann Ritter.
Sadly, Presence lost three members of their growing community of poets in 2025, offering readers an “In Memoriam” section with works by numerous poets in honor of Martha Silano (1961—2025), Jane Greer (1953—2025), and Jennifer Martelli (1962—2025).
Works by over four dozen poets fill out Presence 2026, including Susanne Paola Antonetta, Bruce Beasley, Seán Carlson, Robert Cording, Alice de Chambrier, CX Dillhunt, Lynn Domina, Ann Fisher-Wirth, Carly T. Flynn, Jana-Lee Germaine , Mia Schilling Grogan, Katie Hartsock, Marci Rae Johnson, Desmond Francis Xavier, Nancy Krygowski, Margaret Mackinnon, Paul Mariani, Steve Myers, Brennan O’Donnell, Kyle Potvin, Dana Ranga, Skip Renker, Eva Skrande, Julie Cadwallader Staub, Carey Taylor, David Thoreen, Cara Valle, Anastasia Vassos, Gail White, James Matthew Wilson, and Carolyne Wright among others.
Celebrating 20 years, the August Poetry Postcard Festival invites writers to sign up to be placed in a group. As each group reaches 32 registrants, each participant receives a list of names and addresses of the others in their group. The goal is to write a poem a day on a postcard to the next person on the list after your own name and mail it to them. In return, you will receive a poem from each participant in your group. Writers are encouraged to start in advance of August 1 to allow time for the postcards to arrive, but it’s common to have some days go by with no card arriving and others with several cards waiting in the mailbox.
In 2025, 493 participants spanned 9 countries around the globe: Canada, France, The United States, Italy, Ireland, Great Britain, Australia, Japan and Austria and 46 U.S. states and Canadian provinces, including the District of Columbia.
If you cannot participate this year, there is always next year to look forward to! Registration for this event opens September 1 of each year; early bird registration closes June 4; final registration is July 4.
Posit online literary magazine publishes curated poetry, prose, and art, favoring innovative, finely crafted, often experimental work with depth and resonance. The editors invite readers to Issue 42, which features “visual art and literature that integrates innovation with interrelation, challenge with resonance, and discomfort with grace.”
Poetry and prose contributors to this issue include Mike Bagwell, James Butler-Gruett, Valerie Coulton, Elizabeth Dodd, Corwin Ericson, Pearl Kan, David Lehman and David Shapiro, Eléna Rivera, Orchid Tierney, G. C. Waldrep, John Walser, and Evan Williams, plus textiles, sculpture, painting and more by Nancy Cohen, Tamara Kostianovsky, and David Webster.
Cover art: Tamara Kostianovsky, Finding Space (2025)
Happy Friday! It’s been a week of scorching heat and nasty storms out there, hopefully you’re staying cool, hydrated, and safe.
Whatever the weather is doing at your end, NewPages is back with our weekly roundup of submission opportunities. If Mother Nature is still throwing a temper tantrum, this is the perfect excuse to stay inside and put those hours to good use. And if the skies have cleared? Go outside—just don’t leave the house without something to write on. Inspiration has a habit of striking when you least expect it, and a writer should always be prepared.
This week’s prompt explores how we decide what belongs and what doesn’t—and why something can be beautiful, thriving, and still be treated as something to remove.
Submission Opportunities: 110+ Ways to Share Your Work
Looking for places to submit your writing, artwork, or hybrid work? You’re in the right place.
Each week, NewPages curates and updates a comprehensive list of open submission opportunities, including literary magazines, journals, presses, contests, and calls for themed issues. Opportunities span poetry, fiction, nonfiction, cross-genre, visual art, and more, with options for both emerging and established writers.
Paid newsletter subscribers receive early access to many of these calls before they’re posted publicly, along with our monthly eLitPak Newsletter, featuring additional opportunities, events, and industry news.
✏️ Have young writers at home? Don’t miss our Young Writers Guide, which highlights contests and publications open to grades K–12.
🏆 Interested in writing contests, book awards, and literary prizes? Explore our curated list of current contests from literary magazines, independent and university presses, writing organizations, and events.
🔔 What’s new this week? Items marked with a bell icon are newly added to this roundup.
This morning I took the boys out for a walk before the heat and humidity had a chance to settle in, and there at the edge of the driveway, I found them again—pale trumpet-shaped blooms, white with the faintest pinkish tints and deeper-colored markings at the throat. They’ve come back every summer for years now. I have no idea where they came from originally, but they reminded me immediately of the morning glories we used to grow around the old well pump. Google, ever the authority, informs me it’s a weed—though it belongs to the very same family as morning glories. And that got me thinking—who gets to decide?
“Midsummer Magic” is the perfectly timed theme for Blink-Ink #64. “Rise with the sun on Midsummer’s Day,” wrote the editors in their call for submissions, “wash your face with dew, fill a bowl from a spring, and you may scry your beloved. At Midsummer, the veil between the worlds is thin and magic is afoot. If you only want to get home without being whisked away to Faerie, carry a bit of iron and hurry past the fairy mounds.” Contributors in this issue include Rachel Friedman, Rachel M. Hollis, Daryl Scroggins, Sally Reno, Marybeth Rua-Larsen, Stephanie M. Wytovich, Scott M. Brents, S.A. Greene, Ruth Heilgeist, Arno Bohlmeijer, K.L. Mill, and many more.
Blink-Ink publishes stories of approximately 50 words in a small-format print quarterly. Blink-Ink #65 is themed “Home” and is open for submissions until July 15. See their website for more information about submissions and subscriptions.
While there is no shortage of the number of literary magazine startups, the distinction with Nerve to Write: A Magazine for Disabled, Chronically Ill, and Neurodivergent Writers is the essential nature of its existence. This isn’t just another lit mag driven by want, but rather Nerve to Write is a magazine our community needs. “Many disabled, chronically ill, and neurodivergent people feel alienated and isolated and are searching for community and connection,” explains Nerve to Write Founder and Editor-in-Chief Sarah Fawn Montgomery. “We hope the literature and art in our magazine can be that community and connection. We hope readers who come across our journal will discover something of themselves reflected in our digital pages, while also learning about other disabled experiences and identities, as we weave together many perspectives into a complex web of acceptance and access.”
Many of the pieces in Volume 18.1 of Consequence focus on the power of language while addressing the consequences, realities, and experiences of war and geopolitical violence — whether in its written or spoken form. From H.R. Spencer’s poem “The Grammar of War” to Dewaine Farria’s essay “Speaking as a Veteran” to Bänoo Zan’s translation “Silent Language” to Glory Duruem’s short story “Our Unspoken Country,” which emphasizes the potency of things not said.
“As writers ourselves,” Consequence editors comment, “we certainly appreciate pieces that highlight the muscle of words, specifically how they can give shape to an ostensibly indescribable experience or help us discern and engage with convoluted realities. Of the many invaluable capabilities language possesses, its ability to help others glimpse, or even connect to, another person’s elusive experience or tangled world is possibly its greatest. Few other arenas spotlight this ability like those related to the consequences of war and geopolitical violence. . . . language, especially that which is well-crafted, has the ability to help us see the outlines and details of these oversized and often unbelievable realities.”
These details help us become more aware and, ideally, more deeply affected by these experiences. Or as Sayani De writes in “In the Same Tongue”: “Because stories need to be told for the larger collective, for the personal in larger histories, so that they can help to remember, resist, and transform.”
The June 2026 issue of The Lake is now online. This monthly journal of poetry and poetics features new works by Ben Bruges, Clive Donovan, Andy Humphrey, Albert Hwang, Jackson, Paul McDonald, Larry Ollivier, Anya Reeve, Jeff Ryan, and Michael T. Smith.
This issue also includes Charles Rammelkamp’s reviews of Timestamp by David Breskin and every single beat of my heart Pamela Wax and Hannah Stone’s reviews of Lives Outgrown by Susan Darlington and The Professor of Transformation by Elaine Ewart. The Lake’s unique column One Poem Reviews invites poets to share works from recently published collections. This June issue showcases works by J Brooke, Emma Kate Brown, Jasmine Erice Harling, and Richard Stimac.
Happy Friday! We hope you found some time to rest and recharge over the long weekend, and that you were able to pause and honor the memories of those who gave their lives in service.
This marks our final submission roundup for May—and you know what that means… deadlines are stacking up fast. There are plenty of opportunities still within reach, but the window is closing, so don’t wait to get your work out into the world.
Submission Opportunities: 90+ Ways to Share Your Work
Looking for places to submit your writing, artwork, or hybrid work? You’re in the right place.
Each week, NewPages curates and updates a comprehensive list of open submission opportunities, including literary magazines, journals, presses, contests, and calls for themed issues. Opportunities span poetry, fiction, nonfiction, cross-genre, visual art, and more, with options for both emerging and established writers.
Paid newsletter subscribers receive early access to many of these calls before they’re posted publicly, along with our monthly eLitPak Newsletter, featuring additional opportunities, events, and industry news.
✏️ Have young writers at home? Don’t miss our Young Writers Guide, which highlights contests and publications open to grades K–12.
🏆 Interested in writing contests, book awards, and literary prizes? Explore our curated list of current contests from literary magazines, independent and university presses, writing organizations, and events.
🔔 What’s new this week? Items marked with a bell icon are newly added to this roundup.
Being a collector of postcards and discovering a cache of old ones while cleaning out my grandparents’ house sent me straight back to my undergraduate days and it seemed too good not to share.
Founded in February 2022, the centenary month of the publication of Ulysses, L’Esprit Literary Review was born in celebration of the literary revolution of consciousness represented by High Modernism, and seeks to publish work written in the fearless, risk-adept, and revolutionary spirit. The online journal accepts submissions of short fiction, creative non-fiction, novel extracts, literary criticism, book reviews, artwork, and photography.
The April 2026 biannual issue features works by Richard Leise & Lillian Taylor, Jessica Faulkner, Katrin Arefy, Miah Jeffra, Daniel Barbiero, Kent Kosack, Caroline Bock, Chance Freihaut, Maggie Armstrong, Jennifer McMahon, Margaret Dunn, H. L. Onstad, Michal Tallo, Ann Landi, Amanda Michalopoulou, and Andrea Lewis.
(Out) On the Road: The Radical Joy of Queer Travel by Lindsey Danis Ig Publishing, May 2026
Queer people hold passports at twice the rate of the general population and collectively spend around $100 billion a year on travel—yet remain one of the most underserved groups in the travel industry. A new book aims to change that.
(Out) On the Road by LGBTQ+ travel writer Lindsey Danis is the comprehensive, by-us-for-us guide that queer travelers have been waiting for.
“LGBTQ+ travelers are a growing demographic. They are passionate about travel and willing to spend money on it. Yet time and again, they are ignored or told to stick to a handful of ‘safe’ destinations. This advice fails to build their confidence, validate their identities, or teach them how to advocate for themselves,” says Danis.
(Out) On the Road challenges that conventional wisdom head-on. Drawing on decades of personal travel and eight years as an LGBTQ+ travel writer for publications including AFAR and GayCities, Danis covers everything from navigating safety to funding travel to finding support and connection on the road. Readers will discover how to face their fears, expand their comfort zones, plan affirming adventures — both in the US and internationally — and return home transformed.
Since 1967, Cimarron Review has published imaginative, truth-driven poetry, fiction, and nonfiction by emerging writers alongside celebrated, award-winning literary voices. The newest issue (225) continues the tradition with poetry by Diana K. Malek, Jenn Blair, Lisa Titus, Sharon Lin, Dorsia Smith Silva, A.E. Stallings, Marisa Lin, Barbara Duffey, Jessica E. Pierce, SM Stubbs, Judith Skillman, Alec Hershman, Ori Fienberg, Danielle Hanson, Luke Hankins, Athena Kildegaard, nonfiction by Andrew Bertaina, Allison Field Bell, and fiction by Nona Caspers, Rebecca Orchard, JP Gritton, and Andrew Malan Milward.
Cimarron Review is a national journal of arts, letters, and opinions, published in the Winter, Spring, Summer, and Fall at Oklahoma State University, Stillwater.
Published by The University of Missouri-Kansas City since 1934, New Letters Winter/Spring 2026 celebrates the New Letters Literary Award winners and Editor’s Choice Award recipients as well as incredible fiction from Andrew Bertaina, Billy O’Callaghan, and Dimitra Rizou — including her graphic story “Let’s Finish Early and Give Everyone 7 Minutes Back” (“Trust us,” the editors say, “you’ll want to spend more than 7 minutes with this one”). This issue also features poetry from David Thoreen, Kelly Gray, and Doug Ramspeck, plus thoughtful essays by Courtney Santo and Elissa E. Minor. A full-color portfolio of artwork by Dean Kube is included inside in addition to the cover image.
With Issue 50, Bellevue Literary Review celebrates its 25th Anniversary of publication! As Editor-in-Chief Danielle Ofri writes in her foreword, “We certainly weren’t thinking in terms of a silver jubilee back when this all started with a wisp of an idea about creative writing on health, illness, and healing. But these themes are universal, and using the arts to grapple with our shared vulnerabilities turned out to be a prescription that resonates with an ever-growing community.”
Issue 50 includes the winners of the annual BLR Literary Prizes: Shannon Perri for the Goldenberg Prize for Fiction; Won Lee for the Felice Buckvar Prize for Nonfiction; and Dara Laine for the John and Eileen Allman Prize for Poetry. Readers will find a wealth of new fiction, nonfiction, and poetry filling out the issue, with Ofri commenting, “We recognize that BLR writings engage directly with experiences of illness, loss, suicide, and the realities of the body in ways that may be intense or affecting for some readers. We hope you will find meaning and resonance in the stories, essays, and poems contained herein.”
Happy Friday! We hope you found some time to rest and recharge over the long weekend, and that you were able to pause and honor the memories of those who gave their lives in service.
This marks our final submission roundup for May—and you know what that means… deadlines are stacking up fast. There are plenty of opportunities still within reach, but the window is closing, so don’t wait to get your work out into the world.
Submission Opportunities: 134 Ways to Share Your Work
Looking for places to submit your writing, artwork, or hybrid work? You’re in the right place.
Each week, NewPages curates and updates a comprehensive list of open submission opportunities, including literary magazines, journals, presses, contests, and calls for themed issues. Opportunities span poetry, fiction, nonfiction, cross-genre, visual art, and more, with options for both emerging and established writers.
Paid newsletter subscribers receive early access to many of these calls before they’re posted publicly, along with our monthly eLitPak Newsletter, featuring additional opportunities, events, and industry news.
✏️ Have young writers at home? Don’t miss our Young Writers Guide, which highlights contests and publications open to grades K–12.
🏆 Interested in writing contests, book awards, and literary prizes? Explore our curated list of current contests from literary magazines, independent and university presses, writing organizations, and events.
🔔 What’s new this week? Items marked with a bell icon are newly added to this roundup.
“And still, you chose to sleep beside the ghost of me.”
— Ashes of Eden, “Sanctuary of Silence” (2026)
This week’s writing spark explores the architecture of a love that was never spoken aloud.
There are songs that find you in a particular kind of ache, the kind you didn’t know had a name until the music gave it one. Ashes of Eden’s “Sanctuary of Silence” is one of those songs for me. It explores something most love stories skip past entirely: not the dramatic ending, not the confrontation, but the quiet architecture of a love that was never spoken aloud. A devotion that built its own temple in the dark and kept the lights on even after the person it was built for walked away.
The line that won’t let me go: “And still, you chose to sleep beside the ghost of me.”
A note before we begin: I came to this song one way and found it held something else entirely. If you’ve lost someone—recently, or not so recently—this prompt has a room for that too. The sanctuary doesn’t care how the person left. Only that they’re gone, and that something of them still echoes, just like I cannot escape from the echo of my grandfather who would have turned ninety today.
Weekly Creative Prompt
Sanctuary of Silence
“And still, you chose to sleep beside the ghost of me.”
— Ashes of Eden, “Sanctuary of Silence” (2026)
This week’s writing spark explores the architecture of a love that was never spoken aloud.
There are songs that find you in a particular kind of ache, the kind you didn’t know had a name until the music gave it one. Ashes of Eden’s “Sanctuary of Silence” is one of those songs for me. It explores something most love stories skip past entirely: not the dramatic ending, not the confrontation, but the quiet architecture of a love that was never spoken aloud. A devotion that built its own temple in the dark and kept the lights on even after the person it was built for walked away.
The line that won’t let me go: “And still, you chose to sleep beside the ghost of me.”
The Missouri Review Issue 49.1 (Spring 2026) is themed “The Cost of Living” and opens with a foreword by Speer Morgan who traces inflation from America’s founding to our contemporary anxieties, reflecting on the roles of scarcity, ambition, literature, and the emotional costs of survival. The issue goes on to highlight The Missouri Reviews 2025 Editors’ Prize winners: Peter Kessler (fiction), Eden Mecham (nonfiction), and Seth Simons (poetry). Readers will also enjoy discovering debut fiction from Emrys Penrose, new fiction from Yi Jiang and Geneviève Mathis, new poetry from Alissa M. Barr and Martin Rock, new nonfiction from Denise Galica and Marina Hatsopoulos, features on Modigliani and Mae West, and a review of three recent poetry collection considered in the context of the legacy of Confessionalism.
About Place Journal‘s May 2026 issue, The Ground Beneath Us: Place, Power, and Resistance, is a bold and unflinching issue that centers place as a living force shaped by history, marked by power, and sustained through resistance. In a political moment defined by state violence, environmental crisis, and struggles over bodily autonomy, this collection refuses neutrality. Instead, it asks what it means to belong, to remember, and to fight for the ground beneath us.
Bringing together poetry, essays, fiction, hybrid work, and visual art, the issue moves across landscapes both physical and imagined. Here, land is not backdrop but witness: to displacement and diaspora, to gentrification and ecological grief, to sacred memory and communal care. Each piece contributes to a larger tapestry that maps not only geography, but survival, resilience, and transformation.
Art takes over in the newest issue of AGNI(103). Paintings by Danielle Mckinney put the thinking self among canvases and books, prefiguring essays by Christie Hodgen, John Cotter, and Mairead Small Staid. In poetry, Victoria Chang and Phillip B. Williams, and in fiction, Jan Carson and Andrew Zornoza speak a self’s truth through art, while poems by Hilda Hilst, (translated by Justin Greene), D. Nurkse, and Hayan Charara counter boggling visitations with the bulwark of language. In this issue’s introductory essay, Senior Editor Shuchi Saraswat resists numbness above all her Editor’s Note, “To Be in a Time Of War.” In nonfiction, May Teng and Ashaki M. Jackson, and in fiction, and Jane Morton and Charu Sinha find an answer in the telling, and the listening.
A full table of contents and several sample works from this print issue are available to read online alongside AGNI‘s unique online-only content, including poetry by Campbell McGrath and Jeff Whitney, “Rewriting the Script of Matrescence Memoir: A Conversation with Erica Stern” by Elizabeth Brogden, “’The Border Moves Through Us’: From Minneapolis, 2026′ blog post by agnimag, and “To Never Have Risked Our Lives: A Portfolio of Central American and Mexican Diaspora Writing” with poetry, fiction, essays, and conversations coedited by Esteban Rodríguez, Jennifer De Leon, and Ben Black.
The Common Issue 31 includes essays about a friendship in Senegal and an injury that won’t heal; stories set in Turkey and India, and in a laboratory, a racetrack, a gym, and a farm; and poems on family, race, faith, Ukraine, and more by Fatimah Asghar, Olena Jennings, Ezza Ahemed, Lauren Delapenha, Aleksandar Hemon, Aimee Nezhukumatathil, and more. Visit The Common website for unique online content in addition to the print issue, such as “Conjuring Home: Talia Lakshmi Kolluri interviews Samina Najmi,” the podcast: A. J. Bermudez on “The Sixteenth Brother,” and the mesmerizing photo essay “On the Farm” by Nina Fuller.
TEACHERS! The Common website offers the section, “Teach The Common” with information about how to obtain classroom copies – with staff available to help select the best issues for the curriculum – and schedule a class visit with Editor-in-Chief Jennifer Acker.
Happy Friday! Our balmy stretch here in Michigan—punctuated by a few thunderstorms—has given way to cooler weather just in time for the long weekend. We’re wishing you a safe and restful Memorial Day.
And when you’re ready to write, revise, or submit, we’re here with this week’s roundup of opportunities—plus a small spark to get your ideas moving and your pen across the page (or fingers on the keys).
Submission Opportunities: 124 Ways to Share Your Work
Looking for places to submit your writing, artwork, or hybrid work? You’re in the right place.
Each week, NewPages curates and updates a comprehensive list of open submission opportunities, including literary magazines, journals, presses, contests, and calls for themed issues. Opportunities span poetry, fiction, nonfiction, cross-genre, visual art, and more, with options for both emerging and established writers.
Paid newsletter subscribers receive early access to many of these calls before they’re posted publicly, along with our monthly eLitPak Newsletter, featuring additional opportunities, events, and industry news.
✏️ Have young writers at home? Don’t miss our Young Writers Guide, which highlights contests and publications open to grades K–12.
🏆 Interested in writing contests, book awards, and literary prizes? Explore our curated list of current contests from literary magazines, independent and university presses, writing organizations, and events.
🔔 What’s new this week? Items marked with a bell icon are newly added to this roundup.
“I like the stars. It’s the illusion of permanence, I think… I can pretend that things last. I can pretend that lives last longer than moments.”
Neil Gaiman, The Sandman, Vol. 7: Brief Lives
This week, we’re drawing inspiration from Miia’s Dynasty to explore the things we built, believed in, and lost—and what, if anything, remains.
For a long time, Miia’s Dynasty was everywhere—YouTube Shorts, fan-made MVs for the dramas I was watching, layered under scenes of characters loving each other badly or beautifully or both at once. When you hear it in that context enough times, it gets under your skin. It adds a bittersweet poignancy to everything it touches.
Then the other day, just streaming music, Miia’s own video came on—and I was transported. Back through all those clips, all those stories, and then further, into thinking about the different kinds of dynasties we build in our own lives. The ones we were born into. The ones we chose. The ones we were so sure would last.
It’s a little like what Adele did with Rolling in the Deep—that gut-punch of we could have had it all. The belief was real. The loss was real. And somewhere in the space between those two truths is where the song lives.
This time of year, when we’re thinking about what endures and what doesn’t—the things handed down, the things lost, the names we still speak and the ones that quietly faded—Dynasty feels like exactly the right spark.
What we build. What we believed about it. What falls. What remains.
This Week’s Challenge
Choose the moment that pulls you in and create from there.
The Belief Write or create from inside the certainty. Before the cracks, before the signs. What does it feel like to be sure something will last? A relationship, a family, a way of life, a legacy built across generations. Let your work hold that conviction without irony, the reader should feel how real it was.
The Fall Collapse isn’t always loud. Sometimes a dynasty ends in a single quiet decision, a silence where there should have been a word, a door closing softly on something enormous. Write or create from inside the unraveling. What does it look like, feel like, sound like from where your character is standing?
The Gap That specific, suspended moment of realizing it’s over. Not the aftermath, the instant. The breath between what you thought you had and the truth of what remains. This is the hardest territory to write and the most resonant when you get it right.
The Aftermath What survives a dynasty’s end? A photograph. A last name. A habit. A scar. A song someone still hums without remembering where they learned it. Write or create from what’s left behind—what gets carried forward and what gets buried.
Three Craft Notes
Let scale be flexible.
A dynasty doesn’t have to be a kingdom. The most powerful versions of this prompt will probably be intimate—a family, a relationship, a self-concept that once felt unshakeable. Don’t reach for the grand when the small is closer to the truth.
Resist explaining the loss.
The temptation in collapse narratives is to account for everything—to make the fall make sense. But the most haunting work leaves something unnamed. Trust the gap. One unexplained detail held with confidence will do more than a paragraph of analysis.
For visual artists and collage makers:
Think about what a dynasty looks like at each stage—the gold of the belief, the fracture lines, the ruins, the single artifact that outlasts everything else. Juxtaposition between grandeur and intimacy can carry the whole emotional arc without a single word.
Enjoy prompts like this?
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The Malahat Review 234 opens with the 2026 Constance Rooke Creative Nonfiction Prize Winner, “The First Law of Adoptee Physics” by Hayden Park and the 2026 Open Season Awards: Andrea Bishop (fiction), “Show and Tell”; Stephanie Harrington (cnf), “Chimera”; and Cassandra Myers (poetry), “Quantum Entanglement for Honeybees and Other Yellow Collisions.”
The issue is also filled with great poetry by Lorna Crozier, Joe Gorman, Kath Healing, Leigh Kotsilidis, Steve Noyes, José Emilio Pacheco, (translated from the Mexican Spanish by George McWhirter), Ayaz Pirani, Jessica Popeski, Xitlalitl Rodríguez Mendoza (translated from the Mexican Spanish by Daniela Rodríguez Chevalier and Dora Prieto), John Steffler, Christine Walde, and Jordan Williamson; fiction by Diana Dima, Sophie Jai, and Claire Wilmot; and creative nonfiction by Carmen G. Farrell and Russell Thornton, as well as six reviews of new works of poetry, fiction, and nonfiction.
Published out of Mississippi Valley State University, Valley Voices Spring 2026 opens with “A Poetic Duet: An Interview with Tobi Alfier and Jeffrey Alfier” and continues with “Transience” a photo essay by Claudia Brefeld, spotlighting photos on “passing away” and “traces of time that become visible and highlight transience. This transience has a special beauty and melancholy inherent in it. And so, each photo tells its own story.”
Readers will also enjoy fiction and nonfiction by Jacqueline St. Joan, Charlie R. Braxton, Daniel Webre, and Susan Duke, and poetry from Michael Catherwood, V. P. Loggins, Charles Rammelkamp, Philip C. Kolin, Kerri L. Bennett, Caitlyn Burns, Patricia L. Hamilton, Susana H. Case, Susan Weaver, Bradley R. Strahan, Will Limehouse, Kelly Talbot, Bert Molsom and many more.
Do you write historical fiction? Submit your unpublished short story (up to 5,000 words) set in any historical setting, any subgenre, any time period before 2000 to the 4th Annual History Through Fiction Short Story Contest, open June 15 — August 15, 2026.
Writers compete for cash prizes, including a $250 grand prize, and publication in the History Through Fiction’s next paperback anthology (March 2, 2027). Writers will also receive editorial feedback on every submission. Multiple submissions accepted.
Early bird fee: $20 through July 14; regular fee: $30 beginning July 15.
Let your story recover the past and reach new readers!
Founded in 2019 by Minnesota author and historian Colin Mustful, History Through Fiction is an independent press dedicated to publishing high-quality historical fiction.
The Greensboro Review has been publishing the best poetry and fiction from emerging and established voices since 1966, and their Spring 2026 issue (Number 119) continues this tradition, featuring the Robert Watson Literary Prize winners, Mai Mageed’s “Signs of Intelligent Life” for fiction and Anne Shafmaster’s “Love and Beauty” for poetry, as well as new work by Marcie Alexander, Taylor Byas, Michael Chang, Alex Chertok, Kennedy Coyne, Anna Egeland, Desmond Everest Fuller, Lyn Butler Gray, Tammy C. Greenwood, Julia Kolchinsky, Suphil Lee Park, K. A. Polzin, Alison Powell, Rick Rohdenburg, Jordan Roubion, Rob Magnuson Smith, Kate Welsh, Caroline White, Avra Wing, and Corey Zeller.
Catamaran seeks unpublished, book-length poetry manuscripts (60–100 pages) in English from poets living in California, Washington, Oregon, Alaska, or Hawaii.
Prize: $1,000 and book publication. Entrants receive a complimentary one year subscription to Catamaran. Judge: Joseph Millar. Deadline: July 1, 2026.
Individual poems may have prior journal publication (with acknowledgments). Simultaneous and multiple submissions allowed; notify if accepted elsewhere. Submit blind (no identifying information). Winner, finalists, and semifinalists announced September 2026; publication expected April 2027.
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Acclaimed novelist, editor, teacher and “literary godmother” Kate Moses has been taking writers under her wing for over 3 decades – you too can realize your vision for your work with a mentor as invested in your story & your growth as you are. Recent mentees have been published by Flatiron,Northwestern U Press, SheWrites, and Sybilline; won the Pushcart Prize, Narrative Prize, and Independent Book Publishers Association Medal; finalists for Greywolf Nonfiction Prize and Next Generation Indie Book Award; in residence at Breadloaf, Craigardan, Hedgebrook, and Hewnoaks.
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Deadline: August 31, 2026 Nine Mile Magazine publishes online twice yearly, showcasing works deeply imbued with life. We seek to bring great writing to our readers, without consideration of school, style, or form, with a special focus on CNY and featuring writers within and outside the mainstream. Our Propel Poetry initiative publishes books by first rate poets with disabilities.
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Join us at the 10th Annual Taos Writers Conference in beautiful Taos, New Mexico, July 24-26, 2026, with keynote speaker and featured faculty member, Alexandra Fuller (Let’s Not Go to the Dogs Tonight, Fi, and many others). Other instructors include Connie Josefs, Valerie Martinez, Juan Morales, Allegra Huston, Sean Murphy, & Kristina Marie Darling. Offering over twenty workshops in poetry, fiction, memoir, playwriting, screenwriting, and more. FMI: view flyer, [email protected], www.somostaos.org, or 575-758-0081.
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The Word Works is currently open for two opportunities. The May/June Open Reading Period accepts full-length poetry manuscripts (typically 48–80 pages) from May 1 through June 30; up to five books are selected for publication; entry fee: $20.
The Tenth Gate Prize (June 1–July 15) awards $1,000 and publication for a full-length collection by a mid-career poet with at least two previously published books (chapbooks and self-published titles do not count). Submissions are read anonymously; follow general guidelines.
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The Colorado Authors League (CAL) supports and promotes its community of published writers while connecting with and adding value to the reading world. Formed in 1931, authors become members to: keep up with changes in the craft of writing, publishing, and marketing, gain greater visibility for their writing, join a group of like-minded people who love writing.
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The Midwest Quarterly Spring 2026 is a special issue on “Dyslexia and Reading Failure” with Guest Editor David P. Hurford. Articles in this issue include “Writing Systems, Reading, Reading Failure, and Structured Literacy” by David P. Hurford, “Red Ink” by Hailey Cavaglieri, “So Much More Than ‘Just A Mom’: The Struggle of a Teacher to Find Support for Her Son, A Struggling Reader with Dyslexia” by Michelle M. Keiper, “Social-Emotional Experiences of Individuals with Reading Difficulties” by Alex C. Fender and Amy Marcoux, “My Story With Dyslexia” by Paisley Plank, “Lessons from a More Enlighted Writer and Teacher” by Casie Hermansson, “Attention-Deficit/Hyperactivity Disorder and Its Contribution to Reading Failure” by Thomas E. Hurford and Michaela R. Ozier, in addition to twelve other articles and several poetry contributions.
Happy Friday! It was a cold, gloomy week here in the mitten state, but brighter days are ahead—sunshine and warmer weather are finally settling back in. It’s the perfect excuse to grab a notebook and your favorite pen and head outside, letting a little fresh air shake loose the last of those unseasonal doldrums.
Whenever you’re ready to put words on the page, NewPages is here with a spark of inspiration and more than 100 submission opportunities to help you find the right home for your work. Don’t wait—mid-May brings a wave of deadlines, and many are coming up fast.
This week's writing spark asks you to examine what's become overgrown in your work or your life—and what it truly costs to cut it back so something healthier can take…
Submission Opportunities: 127 Ways to Share Your Work
Looking for places to submit your writing, artwork, or hybrid work? You’re in the right place.
Each week, NewPages curates and updates a comprehensive list of open submission opportunities, including literary magazines, journals, presses, contests, and calls for themed issues. Opportunities span poetry, fiction, nonfiction, cross-genre, visual art, and more, with options for both emerging and established writers.
Paid newsletter subscribers receive early access to many of these calls before they’re posted publicly, along with our monthly eLitPak Newsletter, featuring additional opportunities, events, and industry news.
✏️ Have young writers at home? Don’t miss our Young Writers Guide, which highlights contests and publications open to grades K–12.
🏆 Interested in writing contests, book awards, and literary prizes? Explore our curated list of current contests from literary magazines, independent and university presses, writing organizations, and events.
🔔 What’s new this week? Items marked with a bell icon are newly added to this roundup.
A line from a novel-in-progress inspired by gardening? Why not? Can you imagine what a simple phrase can morph into when you are writing? Shall we “cut the rot and keep the roots” together?
Weekly Creative Prompt
Cut the Rot, Keep the Roots
“The most important thing is to prune well. And to prune well, you must know why you are cutting.”
— Unknown
This week’s writing spark asks you to examine what’s become overgrown in your work or your life—and what it truly costs to cut it back so something healthier can take root.
There is a particular kind of grief that comes from watching something you tended carefully go wrong anyway.
My chives used to be a dense, thriving cluster — the kind of herb patch that made you feel like you knew what you were doing. Then, gradually, they didn’t. Early blooming, sparse growth, a tangle so enmeshed the whole clump had forgotten how to be healthy. Meanwhile, the garlic chives spread with complete indifference to anything resembling restraint, colonizing every nearby inch of soil.
The solution, it turns out, is almost brutal in its simplicity. Cut the flowers before they seed. Divide the clumps. Pull the whole thing apart and give each smaller section room to breathe again. The plant doesn’t die from this — it comes back stronger. But you have to be willing to do something that looks, from the outside, a lot like destruction.
Gardeners know this. Writers and artists often need to be reminded of it.
This Week’s Challenge
Think about something in your creative life—or your interior life—that has become overgrown, entangled, or choked by its own abundance. A project that kept accumulating until the original idea disappeared somewhere in the middle. A habit, a relationship, a way of working, a belief you’ve held so long it’s started to crowd everything else out. A voice in your writing that used to serve you and now just fills space.
What would it mean to cut the flowers—to remove what’s seeding more chaos—and separate what remains back into something smaller, cleaner, and capable of growing again?
Create from that threshold. The moment of decision. The act itself. Or the quiet afterward, when the bed looks almost bare and you have to trust that what you kept is enough.
Write, draw, photograph, collage, or compose something that lives in the tension between loss and renewal—where pruning is not abandonment, and division is not the same thing as destruction.
A Way In
If you’re not sure where to begin, start with a specific thing rather than a concept. A paragraph you’ve been carrying in a draft for two years that no longer belongs. A friendship that once felt essential and now feels like obligation. A creative practice you’ve outgrown but haven’t yet let go of. The more concrete and particular your entry point, the more the larger emotional truth will take care of itself.
Three Craft Tips
Not sure where to begin or how to go deeper once you’ve started? These three practices work especially well when the subject matter is loss, necessity, and the things we can’t fully explain.
Let the act speak—resist the explanation
The temptation with a prompt this close to the bone is to explain what it means while you’re writing it. But the most resonant work about necessary loss doesn’t announce itself. It shows hands in dirt. It shows the pause before the cut. It trusts the reader to feel the weight of what’s being separated without being told what to feel.
Write the physical reality of the thing—the tangled roots, the overgrown manuscript, the drawer you finally cleared out—and let the emotional meaning arrive on its own.
Honor what was healthy before it wasn’t
The pitfall of any “letting go” piece is that it can flatten what came before into a problem to be solved. But chives don’t go wrong out of failure—they go wrong out of abundance, out of too much of a good thing left unattended. The more honest and specific you are about what the thing was at its best, the more your piece will carry genuine grief rather than tidy resolution.
Don’t skip the eulogy for what worked. That’s where the real texture lives.
Resist the clean ending
Pruning in a garden looks decisive. On the page, the aftermath is messier and more truthful—what you kept isn’t guaranteed to thrive, and you won’t know for a while. If your piece arrives too neatly at peace with what was cut, push back on that draft.
The most honest version probably ends in uncertainty: the bed looks bare, and you’re not sure yet if you did the right thing, and you water it anyway.
Enjoy prompts like this?
Get fresh inspiration delivered to your inbox every Monday by subscribing to our weekly newsletter. You’ll also find new issues of great lit mags, new and forthcoming titles, recommended readings, bookstore updates, and submission opportunities.
The Spring 2026 print issue of Boulevard includes 2024 Nonfiction Contest winner Mohammad Hakima, and 2024 Poetry Contest winner Rachel Stempel. It also features a Boulevard Craft Interview with Aria Aber and a symposium on the question of silence in art.
Readers will also enjoy fiction from David Nikki Crouse, Connor Greer, Amanda DeMatto, Cormac Badger, and Cathy Kisakye; nonfiction from Patrick Blaney, Finn Deerhart, G.H. Plaag, Alison Powell, Molly Rideout, and Emily Weitzman; and poetry from Ayesha Asad, Angela Ball, Bruce Bond, Andy Chen, Ava C. Cipri, Patrick Donnelly, Nathan Erwin, Siobhán Gordon, AT Hincapie, Olga Mexina, Weston Morrow, and Brianna Steidle.
If you are looking for good literary media content, check out Alaska Quarterly Review on YouTube, “Diverse. New, emerging, and established voices. Readings and literary conversations with depth, complexity, and humanity.”
Unplug to enjoy the newest issue of Alaska Quarterly Review, Spring 2026, which opens with new stories by Amy Benson , Catherine Kim, Katherine D. Stutzman, Eion Connolly, Maria Kuznetsova, Courtney Angela Brkic, Wendy BooydeGraaff, Beth Staples, Michael Czyzniejewski, and Jeremy T. Wilson; essays by Joyce Dehli, Heather Sellers, Tom Kizzia, Debbie Urbanski; and poetry by Alison Jarvis , Margaret Mackinnon, Sara Eliza Johnson, John A. Nieves, Rebecca Macijeski, Brandel France de Bravo, Lauren Camp, Emily Skaja, Michael Montlack, Richard Spilman, Michael Waters, Brian Komei Dempster, Vandana Khanna, Lucas Jorgensen, Benjamin Grossberg, Rosebud Ben-Oni, Masin Persina, Jennifer Stewart Miller, Catherine Pierce, and Craig van Rooyen.
Baltimore Review Spring 2026 issue is now online to enjoy, with opening lines that will entice you to keep reading. In creative nonfiction: “All winter we cultivate our manias.” writes Amy Halloran in “Vegetable Kingdom”; Annie Marhefka opens “El Sendero” with “In his dating profile picture, Greg has sun on his face. . . “; “At Pickles Pub in Baltimore” by Caroline Bock starts, “Within the first fifteen minutes, I learn that you haven’t read a book in thirty years…”; and “Searching for the Fifth Sense” by Betty Ruddy – “I used to have a nose.”
In fiction, the titles are enough, with Yuan Jiang’s “PagerDuty Against the End of the World,” Julien Shen’s “Ducks,” and Gordon Brown’s “Death of a Hotel Manager.” Poets featured in this issue include Zach Eaton, Amie Whittemore, Patrick Whitfill, Dana Holley Maloney, Meg McManama, Jane Hilberry, and Emily Kingery.
The namesake for the online Mistake House Magazine is Principia’s Mistake House, a small structure on the Principia College campus that showcases the creative process of architect Bernard Maybeck. Built in 1931, this cottage allowed Maybeck to test the materials and methods he would later use throughout campus. Mistake House continues to inspire Mistake House Magazine, whose vision is to create a home for literature and art that values both the creative process and final design.
The new May 2026 issue opens with Soap Bubble Set, showcasing one visual artist and one writer, this month spotlighting writer Saúl Hernández and artist Ron Young. The issue continues with fiction by Nic Hinson, Javier Perez Rizo, Leah Johnson, Genevieve Owens, and Sage Kirkbride; poetry by Sophie Cornwell, Brianna King, Zack Carson, Zack Carson, Wyatt Vaughn, Erica Moore, Milagros Muschella, Madi Raleigh, Gracie Jones, Kate Shipp, and Phoebe Robbins. This issue includes Mistake House‘s sixth annual photography section, featuring five student photographers: Ena Castillo, Maryam Ghasempour siahgaldeh, Fatemeh Fani, Lamiya Terrell (Editor’s Prize for Photography), and Graham Littell.
Waxing & Waning Issue 16 is a print issue themed “Free as Animal” and features poetry by M Anne Avera, Kathleen Fields, Kimberly Hall, Pramod Lad, C. Larkin, Bleah Patterson, Danielle Ryle, and John Wojtowicz; fiction by Ian Boisvert, Stacey Gordon, Derek Krause, Adam McOmber, Dalton Miller, and Mark Wolters; creative nonfiction by Annalise C Biesterfeld; drama by Samantha Dols; artwork by K Garcia, Adeline Jackson, Donald Patten, and Zahra Zoghi; and a comic by Cannon Hawley. Readers can order single copies of Waxing & Waning from the publisher’s website.
Happy Friday! Monday gave us sunshine and warmth—just enough to make us believe we’d finally turned a corner. But the week has since folded in on itself, bringing cloudy skies and a twenty- to thirty-degree drop that has us back in sweaters, wondering if spring—or even summer—is truly on its way.
In the gray and chill, I’ve been doing what so many of us do: turning inward. This week has been filled with brainstorming, drafting, and trying to wrangle a serialized fiction project that seems to have taken on a life of its own—shifting, resisting, refusing to be neatly contained. If you’ve ever chased a story that insists on becoming something else entirely, you know the feeling.
Whether you’re navigating that same creative restlessness, ready to send your work back out into the world, or simply looking for a spark to get started, NewPages is here to help. Our weekly roundup of submission opportunities is ready when you are.
A craft prompt exploring how mirrored scenes, parallel structures, and diptych forms can emerge naturally in writing and art—and how to work with that instinct without forcing it into symmetry.
Submission Opportunities: 114 Ways to Share Your Work
Looking for places to submit your writing, artwork, or hybrid work? You’re in the right place.
Each week, NewPages curates and updates a comprehensive list of open submission opportunities, including literary magazines, journals, presses, contests, and calls for themed issues. Opportunities span poetry, fiction, nonfiction, cross-genre, visual art, and more, with options for both emerging and established writers.
Paid newsletter subscribers receive early access to many of these calls before they’re posted publicly, along with our monthly eLitPak Newsletter, featuring additional opportunities, events, and industry news.
✏️ Have young writers at home? Don’t miss our Young Writers Guide, which highlights contests and publications open to grades K–12.
🏆 Interested in writing contests, book awards, and literary prizes? Explore our curated list of current contests from literary magazines, independent and university presses, writing organizations, and events.
🔔 What’s new this week? Items marked with a bell icon are newly added to this roundup.
“Perhaps all the dragons in our lives are princesses who are only waiting to see us act, just once, with beauty and courage.”
— Rainer Maria Rilke
A craft prompt exploring how mirrored scenes, parallel structures, and diptych forms can emerge naturally in writing and art—and how to work with that instinct without forcing it into symmetry.
I have a confession to make. Working through a draft recently, I noticed something I hadn’t engineered. Two scenes—separated by chapters, featuring different characters—were quietly answering each other. Same emotional stakes, different outcomes. Same unspoken question, different silences. I hadn’t planned it. The mirror was already there.
That’s the thing about mirroring in creative work. We often reach for it instinctively before we understand why.
A mirror in writing or art isn’t just visual symmetry. It’s a structural echo—a repeated event, a parallel relationship, a second image that reframes the first simply by existing. A poem where the closing lines reverse the opening. A story where two characters make the same choice under different circumstances and one of them breaks. A diptych—and yes, the diptych isn’t only for visual artists; two poems placed side by side, two flash essays in conversation, two panels of a comic—where the meaning lives in the gap between the halves, not in either half alone.
The instinct toward mirroring is natural. The challenge is learning when to trust it and when to get out of its way.
This Week’s Challenge
Create something that uses mirroring as a structural device—but don’t force it. Start with one image, one scene, one voice. Then let the second half arrive on its own terms. What answers it? What reverses it? What stands across the glass and means something different depending on which side you’re reading from?
Craft Lesson
The most common pitfall with mirrored structures is engineering the symmetry too early. When a mirror is built before the material has found its own shape, it tends to flatten both halves — each one bending toward the other instead of standing on its own. Write the first half as if there is no second. Let it be complete. The mirror, if it belongs, will reveal itself in revision.
A mirror doesn’t have to be exact to work. The most resonant parallels are the ones that are almost symmetrical but not quite — two scenes that rhyme without matching, a repeated phrase that shifts meaning because the speaker has changed. Imperfect mirrors carry more emotional weight than perfect ones. They create the sensation of recognition without the neatness of resolution.
Enjoy prompts like this?
Get fresh inspiration delivered to your inbox every Monday by subscribing to our weekly newsletter. You’ll also find new issues of great lit mags, new and forthcoming titles, recommended readings, bookstore updates, and submission opportunities.
The newest issue of The Blue Mountain Review, an online journal of culture, opens with an introduction by Major Jackson. He shares the kind of chaos and pain that drove him toward poetry, emphasizing how reverence for language and community among writers shaped his growth. Jackson argues seeing poetry not as ego or ambition, but as a lifelong, rigorous, communal practice contributing to a larger human conversation. Prince Stash is the focus of the new European issue of The Blue Mountain Review (April 2026), which can be read online via issuu, and also includes interview, music interviews, artwork, travel and fashion features, as well as fiction, essays, and poetry.
The May 2026 issue of The Lake, an open-access journal of poetry and poetics, is now online featuring new poetry by Mallika Bhaumik, Barbara Daniels, Paul Dickey, Glenn Hubbard, Hana Kelly, MK Kuol, Rebecca O’Hagan, Kristen Park, J. R. Solonche, and Matt Zambito. This issue also includes reviews of contemporary poetry collections, this month spotlighting Laura Kasischke’s I Was Bonnie & Clyde, Tom Kelly’s These Are My Bounds, and Polly Clark’s Afterlife. The Lake also invites poets to send a poem from a recently published book for its unique column “One Poem Review.” The May 2026 issue shares works from M.L. Lyons, Judith Priestman, and Jeannie Mackenzie. Contact The Lake if you’re a poet who would like to share a selection from your own book!
No Packing Necessary: Poems for the Solo Journey by Patricia Ann Joslin Main Street Rag, March 2026
No Packing Necessary: Poems for the Solo Journey is a book of narrative poetry, easily accessible for those recovering from the loss of someone dear. It is a follow-up collection to I’ll Buy Flowers Again Tomorrow: Poems of Loss and Healing published by Charlotte Lit Press in 2023. The title of this second book comes from a line in one of the poems. It speaks to the timelessness of memory — the things we carry in our hearts. Poems reflect the shared experience of grief and the journey of moving forward as time passes. Themes include navigating loss, widowhood, aging and the magic of life in later years.
“’The divine exists even in the darkest places,’ writes Joslin, but these poems are fa from dark. Though many deal with aging, mortality, and grief, they exhibit grace, vulnerability, and empathy. She renders the world in vivid sensory detail — a flash of cardinal’s wing, rock wrens rising in song, the scent of her father’s pipe tobacco — and moves us to see the ‘bliss in the mystery of it.’” — David E. Poston, author of Letting Go.
Patricia Ann Joslin raised her family in Minnesota, and now lives in Charlotte, North Carolina.
